Survivor Fans Are Melting Down Over Coach Wade For The Fourth Time

We’ve gotten some wild content from Coach Wade throughout Survivor 50, most notably his reconciliation and then almost immediate break-up with Ozzy, but last night was the first episode of the season where we got the full Coach Wade experience. He was screaming at people about honor and integrity, while trying to micromanage an eleven person split vote, while also dancing and coming up with haikus. It was a hot mess. It was Coach in all the best and worst ways, and not surprisingly, the fanbase is having another meltdown about it.

I say not surprisingly because this is the fourth time this has happened. Every single time Coach Wade has played Survivor, he’s been an extremely divisive figure. A huge segment of the fanbase always hates him while the season is airing. He’s clearly a villain and a wannabe dictator and also a massive hypocrite. He orders people around and lashes out with really vindictive anger when he doesn’t get his way or someone doesn’t follow the plan. He’s always self-righteous and always arrogant, and many fans loudly and aggressively root for his downfall.

Just look at X or any of the other social platforms. It is filled with comments from fans screaming about how much they hate Coach and how desperate they are to see him go home. Videos of Tiffany’s confessional screaming about Coach being a hypocrite have thousands of likes. Multiple prominent reality stars have tweeted about how much they can't stand him. Fans are sharing old videos of Sandra making him cry, and Tyson coaching him on how to be less weird. They're clowning him with memes and posting clips of players rolling their eyes at him. This tweet pretty much sums it up...

The thing is though, we've all been through this before. Every season Coach is on, fans scream about how insufferable he is. A really large segment of the population actively roots for his downfall, but then as soon as his own arrogance blows up his game and he's actually voted out, the conversation completely changes. Once people know how it ends, all those really frustrating things about Coach retroactively soften and the funnier character moments become more prominent in our minds. The same exact thing is (probably) going to happen this season.

Let me just rundown some of the comedy we've gotten from Coach so far this season. He gave us multiple confessionals talking about how he's Coach 4.0 now and how he wants everyone to start calling him The Tide Walker instead of The Dragon Slayer. Then, as soon as he experienced the first minor bump in the road, he blew up and dropped a confessional about how he's abandoning The Tide Walker nickname and returning to The Dragon Slayer.

Or how about the fact that he kinda sorta stole the key from Ozzy, then hijacked the conversation about poor Kyle being medically evacuated off the island to defend himself? Or how about him sitting in a hammock by himself coming up with haikus (some of which weren't even haikus) while everyone else was playing the game and talking about him behind his back? Or how about him bragging in a random confessional about how he's had fresh fish all over the world? Or how about him telling Rizo he was allowed to join their alliance as the fourth person since Colby was voted off?

Coach is still in the game, and a large segment of Survivor fans are going to root hard against him until he goes home, especially with the all-star cast he's playing against. They'll think about his arrogance and his hypocrisy and how he tries to control the game using bumper sticker slogans. It's the way it always works with him, and I don't begrudge anyone for feeling that way. I get it completely.

At some point, however, that downfall is going to come. I thought there was a small chance Coach could win the game earlier this season, but after this past episode, I don't think he can get the jury votes even if he makes it to the end. More likely, he's going to get voted off sometime in the next few episodes, and when that happens, Coach's behavior is going to be retroactively interpreted in a different way.

Six months from now, the conversation isn't going to be about how annoying Coach's Honor And Integrity alliance was. It's going to be about how funny it was when he told Rick Devens not to tell the plan to anyone in the middle without realizing that Rick was one of those people in the middle. It's going to be about him causing chaos before the game even started or forcing a nickname on Colby. It's going to be about all of his wacky character moments and what a one of one personality he is.

Coach has a lot of negative qualities, but he also has a lot of positive qualities too. He clearly thinks of himself as JT from Tocantins. Whenever his seasons are airing, a lot of fans think of him as Russell Hantz. With a little distance, he starts to feel a lot more like Keith Nale or Q, and I say that as a huge compliment. I love Coach, and in a few months, most of the Survivor community is going to love him again too.